2020/04/30 by A. Cidrim, T. S. do Espirito Santo, J. Schachenmayer +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.atom-ph #physics.optics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.125.073601
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 073601 (2020) · 7 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2020/04/30 · arxiv updated 2020/08/19
We show that induced dipole-dipole interactions allow for photon blockade in subwavelength ensembles of two-level, ground-state neutral atoms. Our protocol relies on the energy shift of the single-excitation, superradiant state of N atoms, which can be engineered to yield an effective two-level system. A coherent pump induces Rabi oscillation between the ground state and a collective bright state, with at most a single excitation shared among all atoms. The possibility of using clock transitions that are long-lived and relatively robust against stray fields, alongside new prospects on experiments with subwavelength lattices, makes our proposal a promising alternative for quantum information protocols.